For whatever reason, the imitation of concern is enough to ice out some of the burning fury, and a weird little contented burn settles in my chest. Without letting them see their effect on me, I turn around and face the course again.
“Competitors, get ready!” Cain shouts, standing in front of everyone.
I have no idea why I do it, but I think of how I burned Lilith, and mimic the same stirring emotions until his pants…burst into flames.
He curses, reaching down to dust the flames away, but then his pants drop like the fire broke the hem. He grabs his pants, jerking them back up, then glares at the Gemini twins before pointing a finger.
“You fucking assholes,” he growls.
Their eyes widen, and they vanish from the room when he starts stalking after them. Apparently no one in this room would have a death wish besides the two of them. He vanishes too, and I smirk.
Well, I just caused at least a little sibling drama among their royal realm. Sure, it’s minor and petty, but at least there’s some satisfaction in it.
Hera steps up and takes over where Cain left off, using a tone that makes it sound like she’s terribly bored with the entire ordeal.
“Ready, set, go, and blah blah,” she says with a dismissive wave of her hand.
A light flashes and momentarily blinds me.
Chapter 2
We’re suddenly alone in the middle of what looks like a fiery canyon. The fire travels up in streams, wrapping over the mountains in front of us. On the other side, we have woods full of black, ashy trees and zero light.
The right and left of us fades into both as they touch. We’re standing in the only clearing between the two options.
“Do we die in the forest or on the mountaintop?” Gage asks, looking back and forth between both.
“At least we can see death coming if we climb the mountain,” Jude answers.
I zap to the top of the mountain, looking around, then zap back down to them. “He didn’t say anything about not siphoning. No rules other than to finish the course,” I tell them. “Which way is the end? We’ll just—”
“Either direction we choose will take us toward the end or in a circle, depending on Lucifer’s agenda at this point,” Gage butts in. “And I’ve been trying to siphon since we got in here. He’s blocked that ability somehow. Maybe because we’re in the belly of hell it doesn’t work. Who knows at this point?”
“And I can only do it in this form—the form where I can’t touch anything or anyone so that I can siphon them with me, because for whatever reason, each new gift has a downside. Yet I’m not supposed to be a gift from Lilith because that’s impossible,” I state-matter-of-factly, rambling again.
Gage starts climbing the side of the mountain with Ezekiel right behind him.
Jude and Kai move as well, and I grin when I hear Ezekiel yell down at Jude. “Really glad I got that good night of sleep now.”
Jude mutters something as he climbs a little more angrily now. I just hang out, watching them near the ledge, making sure nothing comes at them while they’re distracted. As soon as they reach the ledge, I zap up there, and start looking around, inspecting it for dangers that might catch them off guard.
“I wonder if I can create weapons the same way I create clothes,” I say to them, moving from spot to spot on the barren mountainside ledge in front of them as they start hiking up behind me.
“Don’t risk it,” Kai says to me absently. “Lucifer is likely watching our every move. Besides, we need certain weapons to actually be able to do any damage in hell. I don’t think you’ll be able to materialize those.”
“Can the Devil hear you?” I ask him.
“No,” Jude answers. “Not unless he comes down here.”
I look around, but don’t see an obvious hole in the air where the doorway once was.
As we continue to hike up, avoiding the side with the lava spilling upward, I conversationally say, “So they focus on quads, and they’re desperate to know of your powers. Even accuse you of being too strong to be topside. Yet he seemed surprise you had a balance.”
“I noticed that too,” Ezekiel tells me.
“Just curious, but do you think they’re searching for the Four Horsemen?” I ask.
Jude snorts.
“We thought of that first. The Four Horsemen were killed centuries ago during a collision of the two kingdoms, before we were even born,” Kai answers me. “We thought we’d access more information on it, but even if that’s what we were, they’d be trying to get us in hell; not keep us out.”
Huffing out a breath of frustration, I start to say something else, when a huge half-bird, half-snake creature, breaks through the mountain side, passing right through me with its wide, fanged mouth open for food.
A shudder ripples through me as the scaly tail finishes passing through me, and power pulses from me without me even summoning it, sending the bird-snake squawking in pain as its wings stumble their flight and it starts spiraling downward. It catches itself right before the bottom and shoots off in the opposite direction of us.
“That was so not cool,” I grumble, shuddering again, feeling like I need a shower. “Did you see its tail?”
Gage chuckles, but we all start warily listening to the mountainside now that we know there are beasts that can shoot out of it.
“I don’t know if that thing could see me, but I am curious why the hell some monsters have seen me, even though people—not even the Devil—can do so,” I state idly, glancing around.
No one volunteers any possible answers, so I prattle on, adding, “Maybe because they’re deader? Mushed up in that soul chamber called hell’s throat until they’re the abominations they are now?”
“Maybe because the monsters see differently than our kind. The monsters don’t see things three-dimensionally. It’s another level of vision that has evolved in their state,” Kai says through strain as he starts shoving at a boulder.
Gage helps, and they topple two boulders into the lava, using all their strength to interrupt its path. It’s safe to assume it’s hellfire lava. Quickly, they all jump over those boulders before they sink.
“I wonder if they see me like an ink blob. Psychology would make so much more sense to me if so,” I observe thoughtfully, changing my entire attitude about ink blobs prints on movies now.
“Or maybe they see things in ones and zeroes. Could be the origin of code if one of these was humanoid and got loose topside.”
Apparently they think I’m ridiculous since no one is dignifying my very creative musings as conversation starters.
I keep talking, mostly to myself since they’ve stopped responding. Talking seems to calm me down, and I’m still a little nuclear-level furious from the Devil’s betrayal that we really should have seen coming.
There’s a reason people tell you to never make a deal with the Devil.